British DayDreams

drewa1983

Gold posey ring inscribed "THINK WEL OF ME", English, 16th century

George Inness (1825 - 1894) 

The true love that has survived is mine for you and yours for me.

- Vita Sackville-West to Harold Nicolson

The writer Vita Sackville-West always felt she belonged at her lavish ancestral home: Knole, in Kent. She was distraught that as a woman, she couldn’t inherit it. When she married the diplomat Harold Nicolson, though, they found another historic place in the weald of Kent: Sissinghurst Castle, a magnificent collection of Tudor buildings and a sprawling farm, all of which had long been neglected.

When Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West first saw Sissinghurst, it was a ruin. The sprawling farm in Kent had been for sale for two years, its moated Tudor buildings were mostly derelict and the garden was a rubbish dump. Their teenage son Nigel told them the property was ‘quite impossible’. Nonetheless, Vita went ahead and bought it in 1930 for £12,000. Built on the site of a medieval manor, it is known as Sissinghurst Castle although there is no castle - the name comes from the 18th century French prisoners of war, held there in cramped, smelly conditions, who sarcastically dubbed it ‘le chateau’.